What's done towards AI learning new ways of learning?
I think the closest thing is building up knowledge using predictions like in the Horde Architecture. Research about what are good predictions to make is on going at the University of Alberta, Canada but the Horde architecture has the potential to ask new questions and generate new data based on the answers to those questions in the form of predictions. 

One example is having a robot with a bump sensor and servos and asking questions like 


  Will rotating the servos CW for 90 degrees make the bump sensor turn on?


This question can be phrased and it's answer estimated mathematically in the form of a General Value Function as defined in the paper. 

Asking different questions based on predictions like this one is where the power comes from.